Spring

There 's a definite feel of spring in the air today. The sky is clear, the south-facing slopes of the mountains are bare and I've even seen a few people in shorts and flip-flops, though that's rushing things just a tad.

It's time to start thinking about cycling, especially with the Tour of California going on this week. I spent some time the other day surfing the net for bicycle rides this summer, and found quite a few potential ones. I'd like to be up to at least a 60-75 mile ride by the end of the summer. There are several around the valley and in the Heber Valley, beginning with the Salt Lake Marathon ride in April and ending in September. Of course, last week was the St. George Century and next month is the Skinny Tire Festival in Moab. But the weather hasn't quite been good enough to get outside much yet.

Other Blogs

Today I stumbled across two blogs that are interesting. The first is the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. It's a blog devoted to the increasing and incorrect use of quotation marks around just about anything, whether they need it or not. You can view it here: http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/

The other, which is nearer and dearer to my heart, is the blog of Apostrophe Abuse. This is for all those people (myself included) who grate their teeth when we see a word ostensibly made plural by the addition of an apostrophe. "Toy's", for example. Or a sign in a supermarket advertising "peaches, pears and apple's". You can view that blog here: http://www.apostropheabuse.com/

At the other extreme is the propensity (maybe caused by laziness) to leave out apostrophes where they are really needed, as in contractions. I recently read a book called The Road, which is now a movie, about a boy and his father in a post-nuclear explosion world. It was a great book, very dark and somber. But it was hard reading because the author refused to use apostrophes. He would write "cant" for "can't", didnt" for "didn't", for example. The only time he used an apostrophe was when it was necessary to differentiate, such as "its" or "it's". And he did not use quotation marks for any conversation. Similar to that is Cold Mountain, but at least he offset quotations with a dash.